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While you'll want to venture over to CBS Sports to stream the March Madness live action, YouTube is gearing up for the Big Dance, too. The video library will provide highlights, pre/postgame shows and more on the March Madness channel during the postseason schedule. Of course, those who prefer to catch the action on live television can watch on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV when the tournament begins on March 17th. NCAA tournament highlights will arrive on YouTube just weeks after Google and the NFL agreed to circulate pro football clips on the site. No matter how you plan on watching, though, it'll be interesting to see which team will be this year's Mercer. My money's on North Carolina Central.

Seattle's officer-worn camera footage is making its way online, but if you were hoping for anything Cops-like you're likely to be disappointed. In accordance with privacy measures, faces aren't the only parts of a shot that are blurred out -- most of the time it's the entire frame, and audio's been scrubbed as well. Seattle's police department's using methods recommended by volunteer hacker Tim Clemans, and according to SPD Blotter, the redacting process only took half-a-day to process four hours of raw video. Comparatively, the force's old methods would take upwards of a 60 minutes to obfuscate a single minute of footage.

Even in the ideal setting, it's nearly impossible to get the perfect piece of footage that won't require edits. Those changes can be tough to tackle on mobile, but thanks to a YouTube update, perfecting a short video just got easier. Inside the video library's mobile app, a new video trimming feature let's you slide to the exact frame you want the video to begin (and end) before getting rid of the excess. There's also an inline preview, so you can do one last check before uploading to the web. If you're into capturing footage with your phone, these new tools should help you nix the "are you rolling" chatter before your pal's next stunt.

Despite "Gangnam Style" having over two billion views, hosting countless other viral clips and netting over a billion users per-month, YouTube can't seem to turn a profit. How's that? Well, after paying for the infrastructure that makes Google's video empire possible (and its content partners), The Wall Street Journal says that YouTube didn't contribute to Mountain View's earnings. The culprit, apparently, is that most users arrive at videos via links, rather than daily visits to the YouTube homepage where Google could charge a premium for ads. WSJ also reports that the site's reach isn't very wide either, with one source's estimate that nine percent of viewers account for a whopping 85 percent of online-video views. That makes it a much less appealing audience for advertisers than traditional TV programming, despite the outfit's increasing investment in original content.

Even though most of us are only just now starting to look at 4K / Ultra HD, YouTube has had support for the high-res video since 2010 (just two years after it started streaming in HD!). With more than four years of experience under its belt the video service has a bigger library of 4K video than you might think, and starting today it's highlighting that with a special label (shown after the break) to point out 4K videos. According to a spokesperson, 4K uploads tripled last year, and searches for 4K video continue to increase. YouTube says that the VP9 codec it showed off last year is helping that video squeeze through connections of all bandwidth sizes, so give those high quality streams a shot.

To put it mildly, the Plex channel for Roku players is due an overhaul -- an interface full of dull squares doesn't exactly do justice to your extensive media collection. Thankfully, Plex is giving the channel the makeover it needs. The new version brings the Roku client up to snuff with what you get on other platforms, including rich cover art and a greater emphasis on discovering video content like movie trailers and behind-the-scenes footage. As with Plex's other recent upgrades, though, there are a few things missing at the moment. The revamped software will handle your movies, music and TV shows, but channels, photos and playlists are still "coming soon." Also, you may have to be patient. The redesigned front end is available today to Plex Pass subscribers as a preview, but you'll have to wait if you'd rather not cough up cash for early access.

Last week we heard about YouTube's new app for little tykes, and now, it's ready to go to work. YouTube Kids is available on iOS and Android, delivering access to shows and music (Thomas the Tank Engine) with options for learning or exploring (Reading Rainbow), too. As you might expect, there are parental controls to keep tabs on content, sound levels and screen time, and items that don't need to be futzed with by children (comments, etc.) are absent. What's there, though, is a tiny finger-friendly interface of large images for easy navigation. If you're willing to hand your iPad or Nexus 9 over to junior, head over to the appropriate app repository to download.

In today's Daily Roundup, you'll find out about the top 10 wearables you can buy right now, get the scoop on a video game for the socially anxious and read about one of the most influential samples in music. Find out about all this and more, just past the break.

YouTube is launching a new app (initially on Android phones and tablets) that will run only kid-friendly content. YouTube Kids -- home run right there -- will field age-appropriate videos of cats, Minecraft, Thomas the Tank Engine and other things wholesome/hilarious -- the app launches on February 23. The viewer opens up into eight large tiles, and videos are available in four main categories: Shows, Music, Learning and Explore. Curated third-party content will be provided by partners that include Jim Henson TV, DreamWorks TV and Mother Goose Club.

It'd be wrong to say that the cast of Sesame Street just discovered the internet. As it is, the show's characters have dozens of games and mobile apps, with a large video archive that goes at least as far back as "Me Lost Me Cookie At The Disco." It would seem, though, that someone over at the Sesame Workshop has been working to bring Big Bird and co. into the twenty-first century. For starters, Big Bird only just issued his first tweet ("tweet" -- get it?) last week. Meanwhile, PBS Kids just premiered Cookie Monster's first movie, The Cookie Thief, and, in an effort to promote it, also came up with this ingenious gif generator that basically lets Cookie take over your browser.

Sports broadcasts were among the first to give viewers the chance to pick how they watch the action on the internet, but now YouTube is giving the feature a try. A video of artist Madilyn Bailey performing at YouTube Music Night lets users click through a choice of four camera angles as they watch, without pausing. We got the best results by letting the video load a bit before jumping around (apparently pulling down four streams at once can take up a bit of bandwidth) but it still seemed to hesitate occasionally when switching. Properly implemented this could make the next Lollapalooza stream even better, although we're already cringing internally at the thought of multicamera jump cuts as the next overused vlogger trend (interested creators can apply to try it out here).

Things would be a lot easier for roboticists if their creations can learn from any instructional video they watch without further programming. While we're still far from teaching robots complicated skills using just a playlist of YouTube clips, a University of Maryland research team is in the very early stages of making that happen. The team's research is funded by DARPA's Mathematics of Sensing, Exploitation and Execution (MSEE) program, which aims to teach machines not only how to collect data, but also how to act on it. For this particular study, the researchers have developed a system that allowed their test robots to learn from a series of "how-to" cooking videos on YouTube. During testing, the robots were able to perform the tasks shown in the videos using the right utensils and with zero human input.

Nintendo is today rolling out its "Creators Program," a system that ensures it gets paid when YouTubers share its content. The Creators Program is a response to the popular "Let's Play" YouTube clips that feature long amounts of gameplay. Nintendo took issue with such videos back in 2013, asserting its copyright over them either by issuing takedowns or inserting commercials before them. Last year, it did the same with popular Mario Kart 8 videos but also revealed it had a plan to start revenue sharing, and some eight months later it's ready to explain how it all works.

If you regularly use the Maps and YouTube apps on your PlayStation Vita, please raise a hand. If you'd be mightily disappointed if those were to disappear from the portable console, keep your hand up and someone will bring you a tissue. That's because, unfortunately, Sony has announced that both features will be going the way of all things very shortly. Maps is getting erased from history with the March software update, which will, naturally, also kill the geographic elements of the Near social gaming app. YouTube, meanwhile, will stop working on April 20th, although the app itself is being pulled from the PlayStation Store from today. The company does, however, point out that you can still access YouTube via your browser, but let's be honest - it's at that point you probably just pull out your smartphone.

If you've been hoping for YouTube to drop the notoriously buggy Flash video format as its default player, well, good news. Nearly five years after the streaming giant started supporting the HTML5 standard for its videos, it's finally now its player of choice. That means from now on, YouTube will use the HTML5 <video> format by default in most modern browsers -- that includes Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8 and beta versions of Firefox. Why the wait? Well, YouTube says in a blog post that it was waiting for HTML5 to mature and improve -- it was still fairly experimental back then. Now, however, the standard is widely adopted and has plenty going for it, like the support for live broadcasts and a more immersive fullscreen view. Seeing as HTML5 is not just in browsers but smart TVs and other streaming boxes too, this news has been a long time coming. Which makes us wonder how long Flash has left before it's gone altogether.

It's been a few months since Google launched its YouTube Music Key service, and now we may be finding out how it plans to keep the digital shelves stocked. Musician Zoë Keating blogged last week complaining that YouTube threatened to block her music -- she plays "the cello and the computer" sampling her own sounds as part of the performance -- from streaming unless she signed a 5-year agreement licensing her work for the new service, among other changes. So what's going on? (Other than the usual explanation.) According to Keating, she uses ContentID to track and, if she chooses to, get paid when someone uses her music in their videos. The new contract Google is offering is all-encompassing when it comes to monetization, so to keep ContentID her music will be included in both the free and premium services, the entire catalog will have ads on it, and new music is required to come to YouTube at the same time it arrives anywhere else.

It had to hurt when Facebook made a deal with the NFL to play video clips before YouTube, but Google has finally announced its own pact with the league just in time for the Super Bowl. There's now an NFL YouTube channel for official highlights, and Google will also show video, scores, broadcast times and other info in its search results. For instance, typing in "New England Patriots" now brings up the score and a recap of the team's AFC championship game against the Colts, along with a video preview for the Super Bowl. Re/Code reported that in exchange for access to in-game footage, Google will split ad revenue with the league.

Most Blu-rays and DVDs these days come with filmmaker commentary tracks, but it isn't too often you get to hear a game developer give play-by-play while running through something they created. That's the thrust behind the latest episodes of Double Fine Productions' "Devs Play" YouTube series, spotted by Polygon. Here we have one of Doom's co-creators John Romero playing a handful of maps from the legendary first-person shooter that runs on basicallyanyplatform. He breaks down everything from the work that went into differentiating it from id's other FPS Wolfenstein 3D, how the team used texture irregularities to denote secret rooms and even how he's watched speed runs that not even he can replicate. Oh, and he designed the first level last, incorporating everything he'd learned throughout the other missions to make the initial one the most interesting.

Hulu's ex-CEO Jason Kilar has been extolling the virtues of Vessel, his would-be YouTube rival, for weeks. Today, though, you can finally find out whether or not it's all that it's cracked up to be -- Vessel has launched an invitation-only public beta. You'll have to watch on an iOS device or the web (Android is coming "soon"), but you'll otherwise have a month's worth of unfettered access to the service's early, professional-level content. There's no word on when Vessel will be available invitation-free. Even so, the beta is at least proof that the video hub exists as more than just a well-meaning concept.

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huluinternetiosipadiphonejasonkilarmobilepostcrossstreamingvesselwebyoutubeThu, 22 Jan 2015 02:28:00 -050021|21133159http://massively.joystiq.com/2015/01/21/pax-south-2015-massivelys-larry-everett-to-guest-on-mmo-commun/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Massively&ncid=rss_semi
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For MMO fans headed to Penny Arcade's inaugural PAX South in San Antonio, Texas, this weekend, there's one panel not to miss: Where Did Multiplayer in MMOs Go?. Massively's Larry Everett will guest on the community-oriented panel, which runs from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. local time on Friday in the Bobcat Theater. You can probably figure out the topic from the title, but here's the official blurb:

In early MMORPGs, interacting with other community members in places like taverns and main cities were a necessity for advancement and survival. Today, interacting with random players has become a rare event instead of the tools for survival. Is this what we all wanted to happen? Join Alex Albrecht alongside Larry Everett and Patrick Mulhern to discuss the future of communities in MMORPGs.

Massively's big sister Joystiq will also be represented at the show; Joystiq Editor in Chief Ludwig Kietzmann and Community Manager Anthony John Agnello will host the In(s)ane Joystiq Quiz on Saturday evening at 8 p.m. local time in the Falcon Theater.

Microsoft will unveil Windows 10 to the masses tomorrow, giving us a closer look at what the folks in Redmond have been working on. Meanwhile, everyone on the internet is still using weak passwords like "123456" and Google decided to drop some serious money on SpaceX. Get all the details on these stories and more in today's daily roundup.

If you've seen enough Super Bowls, you know that the halftime show is usually your cue to step away from the TV -- unless you really like aging rock bands and lipsyncing pop stars, that is. YouTube is clearly aware that a lot of people tune out, as it's preparing to host its first-ever halftime show on February 1st. The live internet event will have YouTube stars like comedy duo Rhett and Link, EpicMealTime's Harley Morenstein and Freddie Wong performing everything from stunts to fake Super Bowl spots. It's too soon to tell whether or not the stream will become a yearly tradition. Between this and the usual flurry of ads, though, you may find yourself watching everything but football during the the big game.

Maker Studios, the group of popular YouTube hit-makers Disney snapped up for $500 million, has just agreed to release a series of original videos throughout 2015 -- on Vimeo. While it doesn't sound like the group has completely switched allegiances, the deal requires them to make these videos available through Vimeo's Video on Demand service first. Maker Studios has more than 55,000 content creators, including Snoop Dogg, Kevin Smith, PewDiePie (of Let's Play fame) and Lloyd Ahlquist (who created the Epic Rap Battles of History series). Viewers can only watch those clips exclusively through the service within a certain timeframe, though it's unclear if the internet celebs can post their videos elsewhere after that.

Just a few days after President Barack Obama gives his penultimate State of the Union address he'll be taking to the web to answer questions from a trio of big-time YouTube stars. Bethany Mota, GloZell, and Hank Green will sit down with the President in the White House to ask him questions about the issues that matter most to their audience -- mainly tech-savvy millennials. While the three will certainly have their own questions, a good portion of the queries will come directly from you, the American people. You can submit questions via the usual social channels using the #YouTubeAsksObama hashtag.